Nine Ways to Successfully Manage Remote Teams

Advancements in technology allow remote teams and managers to work better than before. Due to specific business requirements, many teams need to work at distant locations and this has significant influences on their work patterns. As an example, software development companies may need to send a few programmers to client’s offices that can be located hundreds of miles away from the main office. It takes a different skill set to fully manage remote teams. Communication between the remote team is crucial if you want to avoid creating frustration and wasting time.

Here are ways to manage remote teams more successfully:

1. Establish frameworks for routines: Remote teams are located far away from managers and they need to self-manage. They need to have proper framework to manage their work routine. The framework needs to include a workflow and clearly defined goals. There must be a way to fully track these goals. This will ensure that the remote team will continue to have good productivity.

2. Consider time zone differences: Employees are often scattered across different countries and you should know about the exact time where the team is located. Time zones affect work events and deadlines. This may seem like a small detail but can represent a huge difference.

3. Consider tax laws: When working with remote teams, there could tax implications, because they work at different states or countries. Some states or countries will require you to pay some amount of income tax associated with these remote workers.

4. Prioritize on essential things: You need to meet your targets and goals. If you want to make sure that remote workers are doing things properly, it is important to validate them through online tools. You need to create a system with relevant tools to ensure specific performance standards can be maintained.

5. Don’t micromanage: When you have a team that is assigned far away from the main office, it’s easy to have an urge to micromanage them. You want to make sure that nothing will fall through the cracks. However, constant requires for updates will be counterproductive. Although you can perform regular check-ins, it is still important that you don’t disrupt their workflow.

6. Keep them connected: Regardless of their locations, remote teams are still an integral part of your company. Managers should make sure that everyone is still connected and communication is essential to shape their workflow. It is possible to have daily brief meetings with remote teams through online tools.

7. Use multiple communication tools: When you manage remote teams, it is important to use many kinds of communication tools, such as video chat, direct phone line, social media or instant messaging. Email should be used only when you need to send long text, along with some attached files. In many cases, you only need to send snippets of information and email isn’t the most practical for this. Non-verbal communication is also essential and it’s the reason why video calls can be quite important. With video calls, you can get visual cues and you will communicate better. Google Hangout and Skype are popular tools for video calling. With video calls, you often can fix various problems more easily and quickly compared with other tools. Ideally, you should have a weekly meeting with the remote team. When meeting sessions are too frequent, it is possible that you will waste time, but weekly meeting should be enough. Your meeting sessions should provide a sense of accountability and your iconic team of employees will become more responsible for their tasks.

8. Collaborate successfully across different culture: It is important for remote teams to work well across cultures. You need to leverage global talent and you will reap immense benefits from that.

9. Maintain a sense of formality: In many workplaces, employees are allowed to dress and behave a bit more casually. However, being too casual could be a bad thing for remote teams. It is important for managers to continue to provide remote teams with a sense of direction and control. There should still be clear expectations, responsibilities and set of roles. If it’s too casual for the remote teams, it’s quite possible that they will start to become guideless.

However, it is important to know that working remotely isn’t for all kinds of businesses. There are plenty of possibilities for distractions and everyone should become a top-notch communicator. In this case, remote teams will begin to miss mutually agreed upon and clearly defined daily goals.

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